I have just been watching TV again now (yes, I don’t watch TV most of the time, and if I do, mostly I watch Disney Channel or Nick #seriously) and just realized there are more variant of cooking reality show: Top Chef, Masterchef, Hell’s Kitchen, etc. They introduce us to the concept of fine dining, three courses meal, or just eating with damn many set of forks, knives and spoons. Meanwhile in Islam our Prophet Muhammad teaches us to eat using our three fingers. However we can’t deny that our eating customs today is not like what our Prophet taught us. Sometimes it is not because we don’t want to follow the teaching, just because the type of food we eat requires us to use the custom of where that food comes from.
And this brought me to the thought of a religious talk a long time ago (probably during high school), that “the west” is invading us using 3F “Food, Fashion, Film”. Looking at the reality today, I think this is true. These 3Fs are the most powerful aspects to insert a foreign culture values. I want to take Korean pop culture as an example. (Dear Korean pop lovers, I don’t hate Kpop culture, I just find it is interesting that it is very viral! More than Japanese). It got my attention through its entertainment world, starting from their unique music stream, their fresh style of reality show, their interesting drama series. Slowly this is bringing us to move to the other Fs, like Fashion (example: Ayu Ting Ting, a dangdut singer who likes to adapt Korean style) then to Food (yess more Korean restaurants gets popular as the entertainment world rises).
Cursing the darkness, are we? Hating those culture who successfully infect our children and bringing them far from the culture they should be following? Thinking that the solution to this is to raise our voice and tell them to stop?
I’d like to see a different approach to this matter. If 3Fs are the key of which they successfully used to give that cultural invasion to us, why don’t we now focus on improving our 3Fs? Take Dian Pelangi as an example. She is a fashion expert who introduces hijab (head coverings used by muslim woman) in her fashion line. I like her in the way she tries to bring Islamic air to the fashion world. Yes, fashion world is overly glamorous, which is not in line with the modesty teaching of Islam. But fashion is art! Just like those paintings exhibition but shown in fabrics and worn by models. But I am sad that some people still criticize her of being unIslamic 🙁
Ok I’ve been moving around too much with this discussion, from food, to Kpop, to Dian Pelangi 😛 The point is I wanna show that don’t leave the 3Fs world and say that they have nothing to benefit our religion’s spread. I hope in the future there are more Muslims who are experts in these fields and are competitive with other culture 🙂 Lets light more candle, not curse the darkness.
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